Last week Blog Talk Radio featured an episode about photography and kids with “Taking Better Pictures of Your Kids”. The show featured Tracey Clark and Kate Inglis from the newly launched site Shutter Sisters, a photo blog full of passion and beauty in imagery and words, giving away their tips and tricks in photography. Inevitably, a question from a listener came up about online privacy and the security of posting pictures of your children online. The show’s host, Kristen Chase, refers to Kinzin as a great choice if you’re looking for a private, niche network, to securely post photos of your kids, saying:

“… there are a bunch of really great private websites out there… called Kinzin.com and they are invitation-only access”.

Kate goes on to mention some of Michael Fergusson’s thoughts on online safety in photography: to say the internet is inherently bad is the same to say that kissing is inherently bad because it can spread disease. True enough. You can listen to the show on Blog Talk Radio in its entirety. (The Kinzin mention comes at about the 22:00 minute mark of the show.)

It’s a pretty good show and has a lot of useful content to share from both the experts in the community, the host and from participating listeners around the Internet.

Websites like Shutter Sisters and Kinzin are those special, niche networks that people are gravitating toward more and more. I’m not tired of Flickr (far from it) or Facebook (god forbid) but quality on the Internet has become more and more apparent and absolutely essential, and these specific spaces online thankfully provide me with a rich user experience.(xposted from Kinzin Blog, with some add-ons)

Kinzin is transforming how families share the most important little people in their lives with the latest launch of Kinzin.com.

Privacy and security online is important to many of us, especially to parents. Kinzin understands this better than anyone and has created an online space for you to share your kids’ photos safely and as private as you deem: you control who gets to see your content. Inviting people to your social network, or rather, subscribing any of your friends or family members into your space, is one of the features that puts Kinzin ahead of other photo-sharing networks.

There is another quality that is probably the most exciting new feature in this launch: social networks in the mail! For Grandma, who doesn’t have a computer or doesn’t know the first thing about social networks or “online communities”, is now able to be a part of your life online. In just a few clicks (and a truly unbelievable low cost), your family members can receive prints of your top 10 images each month, chosen by you, VIA THE MAIL! All of those headaches or concerns over certain family member’s dial-up, download times and those phone calls we all inevitably receive, “How do I login again?” are out the window. There’s something to be said about “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. Kinzin has created a really easy way for anyone you choose to receive the cutest, up-to-date images of your kids through the postal service. I’ve given up trying to teach some of the folks in my parent’s generation (and up) how to enter a URL or surf and search. Sign me up for monthly prints!!

There are some other really neat features that help to create that perfect snapshot in time of your kids. You can add status messages, photo titles and descriptions and the family can comment on photos as well. All of these features are available for each and every image so that every memory can easily be captured and each moment can be put into precise context, not just uploaded as part of an album in a bank of photos.

We all need special tools to be able to share the kinds of private information and experiences about our kids – Kinzin provides this for you in the most perfect package – whether you use Facebook, Flickr, or like Grandma, good ol’ fashioned mail! And let it be known: I ain’t got no kids yet, but I’ve already signed up that non-computer dad of mine to receive my hottest 10 shots every month of my dog – he’ll LOVE it!

I am a social media consultant, building web strategies and implementing technology and social media tools to assist companies in community outreach and help clients produce online communities. I am based out of Vancouver, Canada.